The Madison County supervisors approved spending $22,500 for a traffic study to be done on the Stribling Road area that the Stribling Market is contingent on, but not everyone thinks this is enough to prove whether the gas station should be allowed or not.
The traffic study will take place in either September or October and be a comprehensive study – not just on the area where the store is proposed to be located but on all of Stribling Road. However, Lake Caroline resident Robert DeCoster said a traffic study is not enough. For him, it has been a major frustration that the project is moving so rapidly.
“We realize the area has a traffic problem, and it has for years and years and years,” DeCoster said.
However, traffic isn’t the only problem for him. DeCoster said he believes there is a structural reason the road can’t handle the gas station, that Stribling Market will open the door for much more development in the area, it will cause an increase in crime, and that the traffic studies don’t do much in stopping developments.
Currently, the road has signs posted that there is a 10,000-pound limit and no trucks are allowed. DeCoster said there has to be a reason as to why that has been posted long before these developments took place and it wasn’t due to traffic.
“We really need to have a structural study of how sound is that roadway,” DeCoster said. “When you start putting on large 18-wheelers and grocery delivery trucks, that starts to break down your roadway at a much higher rate. But if you’re bringing a gasoline truck with its fuel on board, you’re looking at probably 60,000 to 80,000 pounds.”
DeCoster questions the road’s structural stability as a two lane highway that was never designed to become a four lane highway. He also said the developer owns property up to Highway 22 and the gas station will only take up three acres, at most, of his property.
“The question is if he wants to go ahead and develop the other 55 acres that are adjacent to that,” DeCoster said. “We’re looking at this project of his as being a Trojan horse. Once you bring that in and you get the one site plan approved, that’ll open it up. With C2 zoning, you can put a body shop or a motel in there, and all that does is increase the traffic flow.”
DeCoster said it also isn’t clear when the zoning changed on that property to commercial.
“It’s been mired in questions ever since 1988, and all we’ve asked for is to show a clear title to show the progress of when it was rezoned and what the request was for rezoning because there has to be a public need for rezoning – not just a private need,” DeCoster said. “If it was a private need, everybody who is in agriculture would want to do commercial because money can be made in it. However, rezoning is for the public need, not the private.”
He said, from the beginning, there has not been a public need for a commercial area to be there.
“Lake Caroline has not changed the character of the community since its beginning,” DeCoster said. “The other thing that I think they’re really overlooking are things like increased crime.”
With the traffic problem comes a slower response time for emergency services, such as fire, ambulance and police, DeCoster said.
“It’s unavoidable,” DeCoster said.
Mainly, DeCoster said that traffic studies aren’t used in the way they should be and developments don’t actually stop when problems are shown in the studies.
“It always comes back as, yes, there are many problems with it being too narrow, no turnouts, soft shoulders leading to rollovers of trucks, poor lighting and two schools that don’t want any more traffic because of already dealing with congestion problems in overcrowded schools,” DeCoster said. “There’s so many different issues that they are overlooking and putting all those just on traffic.”
DeCoster said every time the county has a zoning issue, they run a traffic study.
“That’s always their out,” DeCoster said. “They will do the traffic study and find a way to make it work. We don’t need to make them find a way to make it work. We need to resolve the underlying problem. Don’t tell us that a traffic study is going to solve the problem when it needs a structural study.”
DeCoster said decisions are being made for developments on the roads the county would like to have in the future.
“The county just doesn’t have the money to make all these road changes, so if you want to make a decision, make a decision on what you have now – not what you’d like to have,” DeCoster said. “It is putting a BandAid on a major problem. It’s not going to really sound off to these people until that Trojan horse has opened up and you get a body shop in there. Then all of a sudden, gee whiz, it’s not a little. It’s not a little market. This is big. Don’t fool yourself.”
The traffic study will be conducted this fall while school is in session.
